Club Benefits
You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
Daily (Mon-Sun)
Tom's Guide Daily
Sign up to get the latest updates on all of your favorite content! From cutting-edge tech news and the hottest streaming buzz to unbeatable deals on the best products and in-depth reviews, we’ve got you covered.
Weekly on Thursday
Tom's AI Guide
Be AI savvy with your weekly newsletter summing up all the biggest AI news you need to know. Plus, analysis from our AI editor and tips on how to use the latest AI tools!
Weekly on Friday
Tom's iGuide
Unlock the vast world of Apple news straight to your inbox. With coverage on everything from exciting product launches to essential software updates, this is your go-to source for the latest updates on all the best Apple content.
Weekly on Monday
Tom's Streaming Guide
Our weekly newsletter is expertly crafted to immerse you in the world of streaming. Stay updated on the latest releases and our top recommendations across your favorite streaming platforms.
Join the club
Get full access to premium articles, exclusive features and a growing list of member rewards.
OpenAI is slowly entering the “agent era” of artificial intelligence with the launch of ChatGPT Tasks. This new beta feature lets you assign tasks that the chatbot can run in the background and then gives you the requested information at a set time and date.
I have a task setup for ChatGPT to trawl the web for AI-related news stories about specific products such as ChatGPT, Claude and Runway. It then compiles a report and sends it to me at 9am every morning. It doesn’t do a particularly good job as it pulls in older stories, but it's a start.
Getting the most out of Tasks
Today we’re rolling out a beta version of tasks—a new way to ask ChatGPT to do things for you at a future time.Whether it's one-time reminders or recurring actions, tell ChatGPT what you need and when, and it will automatically take care of it. pic.twitter.com/7lgvsPehHvJanuary 14, 2025
Tasks is an interesting concept and takes ChatGPT further into the realm of becoming a true productivity platform.
Adding personal assistant-like features makes it possible for users to get more of their work done within the ChatGPT app. But, it is still a beta technology and has some limitations, and quirks you need to navigate to get it to work.
1. Be specific in your instructions
In my experiments, I found you have to be very specific in your instructions. For example, if you’re asking it to produce a list of news stories on a specific topic you have to specify that the list should only include stories with a publication date in a set timeframe (say 24 hours).
It also helps to include some negative prompting such as what you don’t want it to include and to specify the format it should display the information. One example of this could be in stocks where you ask it to display the 10 best-performing tech stocks of the past 24 hours with change over 24, 48 and 72 hours displayed in a table.
2. Tell it which tools to use
This is more of an extension to the be specific requirement, but basically, if you want it to use the ChatGPT Search function in your task, make sure you specify it. The same applies if you want it to generate an image and send it at a set time.
3. Specify the format of the report
Outline exactly how you want the information to be displayed. For example, if you want it to generate a dozen jokes every evening to share over dinner, you might ask for it in a bullet list. If you want to have it create a report on air quality in five cities, you’d specify a table as the output.
Final thoughts
You can always just re-prompt it or ask for specific changes once the first report comes back. Or, you can just use the prompt without the task and see what ChatGPT produces, as that will be more or less what you get with the timed response.
If it comes back looking like a garbled mess, keep refining the prompt until you get exactly what you are looking for, then paste that exact prompt into ChatGPT with Tasks + a date and time.
This is an early beta of a new feature that in future could see the AI able to send emails on your behalf to certain people at certain times, make updates within another application or add events to your calendar, retrieve events and even go to meetings for you and send a summary.
More from Tom's Guide
- I put ChatGPT vs Gemini to the test with 7 prompts to help me plan my family's Disney vacation — here's the winning chatbot
- I used AI to imagine humanity in 50,000 years — here’s how it went
- Google NotebookLM just got way better with its new interactive features — here's why I'm impressed
